"Haahhh!!!" Althera's eyes flew open and she gasped in terror, her chest rising and falling violently as though she had just escaped drowning, then threw her hands behind her and dragged herself toward the corner of the bed with hurried, panicked movements that lacked all of her usual composure.
Her entire body was trembling violently.
She had experienced a torment she had never imagined could exist, a kind of suffering she would never have believed possible no matter how far her imagination stretched or how many tales of the ancients she had read. Compared to that pain, every injury she had suffered throughout her life suddenly seemed insignificant and distant.
